CONCEPCIÓN DE SOLUTECA, Honduras — In the 1970s, the Honduran government granted a piece of land in the mountains of Concepción de Soluteca to Roberto González’s parents. They duly grabbed a chainsaw and a machete to clear the forest. On the 12 hectares (30 acres) they received as part of a land reform, they planted corn, beans and bananas, the basic staple foods. It was a hard life up in the mountains, allowing the farmers and their families to just survive. There wasn’t much public infrastructure, and most children had to help with farmwork early on. This included González, who only attended elementary school for three years. When González inherited the land 20 years later, coffee cultivation was just taking off. Middlemen promised the farmers good money for the export crop, and the banks provided loans for cultivation. At first, this worked well, González, now 39, remembers. Coffee helped the farmers to generate income and improve living conditions. But it didn’t last long. They grew coffee much the same way they did other crops, without adequate soil or shade management. When harvests dwindled, they expanded their area, cutting the last standing forests and damaging water sources. Around 2012, they faced an outbreak of coffee rust, a fungal disease. It was a complete disaster: many farmers were thrown into poverty and forced to migrate. “We destroyed the foundations of our livelihoods, but it was out of ignorance; we just didn’t know better,” González tells Mongabay. Under the EUDR, coffee farmers step…This article was originally published on Mongabay

JAKARTA — More than a decade after the palm oil industry embraced a pledge to not deforest, clear tropical peatlands, or use exploitative practices, policies to that end now cover most of the global palm oil trade, as major traders, refiners and consumer brands have pledged to keep deforestation-linked palm oil out of their supply chains. However, deforestation linked to palm oil continues, particularly in Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of the commodity. Satellite analysis by forest-mapping initiative TheTreeMap shows 31,073 hectares (76,783 acres) of forest were cleared for palm oil in Indonesia in 2025, slightly higher than the 30,956 hectares (76,494 acres) recorded in 2024 — highlighting persistent gaps in how the industry enforces its zero-deforestation pledges. In some cases, palm oil from newly cleared land still enters supply chains that companies describe as deforestation-free. “No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation” (NDPE) policies aim to eliminate three major sources of harm in palm oil production: clearing natural forests, developing plantations on carbon-rich peatlands, and exploiting workers or local communities. By 2020, these commitments covered roughly 83% of palm oil refinery capacity in Indonesia and Malaysia, the world’s main producing region. In recent years, companies have also built systems to enforce these pledges. Many now publish grievance mechanisms where violations can be reported, while third-party monitoring groups use satellite imagery to track forest loss and flag suspicious activity. Large-scale corporate deforestation in Indonesia has fallen compared to the mid-2010s, when some plantation companies were clearing vast areas of rainforest. Deforestation for…This article was originally published on Mongabay